Cathedral
Eucharist, Fifth Sunday after Trinity, 30 June 2013, 10.30am
Preacher:
the Vice-provost, the Revd Canon John McLuckie
Another
week of blandness, this time of the Episcopal variety. Maybe I’m just getting
bored now, but yet again there’s really nothing to write home about. I’d been
here before for concerts, but never for a service, but it was pretty much as I
had expected it to be.
St
Mary’s is architecturally impressive, big on music (though its own choir was
on holiday this week, relieved by Peterhouse Chapel Choir, who sang Byrd’s Mass for four voices), and well supplied
with clergy – three of them involved in the service, plus assorted other
begowned people whose function I didn’t fully understand. And the well-heeled and
predominantly elderly congregation lives up to the metaphor about the Tory
party at prayer.
The
readings were Galatians 5:13-25 and Luke 9:51-62, and the gospel was read from
the middle of the aisle after much processing, which all seemed a bit
unnecessary. The sermon united both readings on the theme of freedom. According
to St Paul, freedom lies not in our liberty from compulsions, but in
understanding the nature of our desires and putting them to the service of what
is good, and it is achieved by following the path of the spiritual life. The
evangelist, on the other hand, shows us how Jesus intended to shock people into
re-evaluating their priorities, and that we risk allowing ourselves to be
tyrannised if we devote ourselves to family or nation rather than to God. What
he definitely doesn’t mean by freedom is the freedom to choose between two
dozen brands of triviality; rather, we are free when we recognise our shared
humanity. Well, so much for that. Not the most earth-shattering sermon ever
preached.
What
else? The choir were good, the sung creed (Nicene) was probably the least successful of the congregational endeavours, and the organ was a bit on the crashy side, but it’s a
big space to fill. Oh yes, and the final hymn was He who would valiant be, from which the New English Hymnal has expunged the hobgoblin and foul fiend, which
I always rather liked for the very reason that they seemed unhymnlike, if that’s
a word. It is now.
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